Woke Up Like This(48)

I look down at my straw with a nervous chuckle. “Yeah, old habits.”

Another long stretch of silence as she takes her ponytail out and fluffs her hair like she used to.

“How long have you had the studio?” I ask, slurping the remainder of my smoothie.

Her eyes trail two young girls skipping down the sidewalk ahead of their mom. “Um, about five years now?” She says it like a question, probably because she assumes I already know the answer. I’m not the type of person who asks questions for fun.

“Sorry again for showing up at your work, by the way. I didn’t know where you lived and—”

“I’m still in my place on Crystal Street,” she says.

Again, another detail I don’t know. Have I stayed at her place? Have we had sleepovers? Have we had horror movie marathons where we can’t fall asleep unless all the lights are on? Have we talked all night surrounded by junk food? Have we made up stupid dance routines to oldies playlists? How long has it been since I’ve been there?

As if she can read my mind, she says. “So you and J. T. Can we talk about how adorable your engagement was? When I saw it on online, I actually squealed in my Uber.” She must be referring to the photos I have on my phone of Renner proposing on some tropical beach. There were rose petals, because of course there were.

I squeeze my eyes shut, in denial that my best friend would find out about my engagement on social media. “Did you really find out we were engaged on social media?”

She looks confused. “Are you okay?”

“I, uh . . . I hit my head. A stupid accident, really. My memory has been fuzzy lately,” I say. Technically, it’s the truth. I’ve only omitted one small detail—transcending time. “I guess it just struck me that you weren’t at my bachelorette last night.” My eyes dropped to my engagement ring, glimmering in the sunlight. “You were supposed to be my maid of honor. We promised we’d be each other’s maids of honor.”

She stares down at her now-empty smoothie cup. The straw scrapes against the plastic lid as she moves it up and down with an impish smile. “I know. We practically made each other do a blood oath. And I made you promise you’d never make me wear a yellow or beige dress.”

“Are you engaged? Or married?” I blurt, desperate for crumbs about her life. I feel pathetic asking, especially seeing as Kassie looks so blissful in her life without me.

She wastes zero time responding. “Oh hell no. Settling down is not for me.”

My slack jaw gives away my shock. Since we were nine years old, I’ve walked a step behind her and her various boyfriends on narrow sidewalks, through the hallways. Kassie in a relationship was simply the norm. In fact, I can barely remember a time when she was single. This Kassie feels like a whole new person I don’t know. And I tell her so. “But you’ve always been in a relationship. The day we met, you proudly told me you already had a boyfriend—a kid who lived across the street.”

“Oh my god. Timothy Smith. Guess what? I saw him working at a booth selling cell phone cases a couple years back,” she blurts with a laugh. “Anyway, that’s exactly why I’ve been single for a while. Even in college I kept getting myself into these all-consuming relationships. I just got lost in them. I promised myself a couple years ago that I’d start dating more casually. And I haven’t gone back since. I’m too busy building my business. And I love the freedom to just do my own thing, have my own schedule. I have my friends, my dog. I don’t feel like I need someone else to complete my life, you know?”

I can’t help but well with pride over the person she’s become. I think she could take over the world if she really wanted to. “I’m proud of you. Though who would have thought it would be me engaged and you happily single?”

“Well, either way, I’m glad you’re happy. With J. T. Last time I saw him, he seemed so . . . dedicated to you.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

She bites her lip, perplexed. “Um . . . that would have been . . . last year at your dad’s funeral.”





TWENTY-TWO



My dad’s funeral?” I repeat.

“I mean, we didn’t really talk,” she says, shrugging. “You hugged me . . . but you were pretty busy running around, making sure everything was okay. Being your usual organized self.”

I repeat the words to myself. Dad’s funeral.

Dad is dead. Dead.

I’m too numb to move. To do anything but sit here, white-knuckling my smoothie until my fingertips dent the cup. It doesn’t feel real. How can it? Dad is dead, I don’t know what happened, and I can’t ask Kassie without her thinking I’ve lost my mind.

She gives me a pained expression. “I’m sorry. I know it’s probably still really hard.”

“I wasn’t close with him anyway.” The words don’t feel good coming out, but it’s the truth. Especially since I’ve lost the last thirteen years.

“I know. But you loved him.”

As I fight to keep the tears at bay, my mind pivots to our phone call at the party rental store. Pacing around the hot parking lot as Dad invited me to spend the summer with him and his pregnant girlfriend out of nowhere. I think about how mad I was that he didn’t show up to our party last night. How mad I was when I saw he wasn’t on the wedding seating chart. About all the times he wasn’t there when he should have been. And now I have nowhere to target that anger. Because Dad is dead.